#84 - What discipline really means, combating performance anxiety, hitting protein targets, Vo2 max test for firefighters, training on panamas, & more

Another Q&A! Shoot me a question if you want me to break it down!

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Here are the topics we covered today:

• What discipline really means
• Fueling with whole foods / hitting protein targets
• Pre-run hydration & fueling
• Combating performance anxiety
• Training on shift (panamas)
• Should you cut calories if you go over?
• Avoiding snacking & eating out without derailing
• Best way to cut caffeine and nicotine
• Should you train in a tired state to build discipline?
• Daily or weekly weigh-ins?
• Breaking training into smaller windows / 2-a-days
• Improving VO2 max for a specific test (firefighter)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Everyday Responder podcast. And I hope that you are crushing. We're going to get after a fun QA podcast today. I did have a couple of things that I wanted to mention before we get into some of the questions. And again, these are questions from clients, from Instagram, from different conversations. So again, I try to take a mental note or sometimes an actual note of some of these things as they come in and then put them together in a QA podcast. So excuse me. Some of these are uh are kind of overlapping. So I bunch some of them together. But like I said, before we get into that, I have a couple of things. So we did just launch a tactical readiness blueprint. So we call it, we're calling it T TRB. I know everybody is sick of acronyms, but uh I like that one. So um what we're gonna be doing there is uh once you take an assessment, it's about 10 questions. It takes under three minutes and it's free. I will be developing and teaching about system thinking strategies and specific tactics that you can be getting after to most importantly bring up your potential failure point, right? So the goal with everything is to bring up, you know, our weakest link, especially in the tactical community, bring up our weakness link and bring that to a performance standard. So that is the goal while also respecting everything that we everything else that we got going on with the uniform, with family, with stress, so on and so forth. So that's where that system thinking comes in because I found that a lot of people jack that up, right? We have uh I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and it was like, hey, I want to be more durable, I want to hit these uh strength metrics, I want to, you know, improve this and I want to improve that. And it was just like a long, long, long list of things. And it was like, oh, by the way, I want to also, you know, improve body comp. And I'm like, whoa, this is a a lot of moving pieces, and we can move closer to those targets. But in that example, in the intent of the assessment here is to find one thing, right? Let's prioritize one thing and let's really focus on that. And that one thing, if we choose it right, is going to bring up everything else, right? So instead of being sporadic, like a shotgun approach to what we are doing, it's like, okay, let's bring out the rifle, let's focus on one thing, let's improve that while doing everything else, right? So I've had people ask, is this like traditional periodization? And I would say no, like we are going to bring up your one weakness, but we are still training everything else. So, for example, if your weakness is aerobic capacity, right? And we we kind of define that in the assessment. If that is a weakness, if we bring that up, it's going to improve your strength because maybe now you're able to recover, you're able to handle more volume, you're able to handle more training in general, right? Maybe you are able to also have better energy levels throughout the day, right? Maybe you're you're sleeping better. And like I had mentioned before, you're recovering better. Everything else, every other uniform standard is going to improve, right? Maybe now you have a better foundation to be able to do more calisthenics. And the list really goes on. But for everybody, it's a little bit different. Sometimes it's uh general mobility, sometimes it's lifestyle, sometimes it's certain standards that we need to set on a day-to-day basis that will elevate everything with performance. So, again, one target, that is our goal there. And then I'm going to, with the uh with once the assessment's filled out, I'm going to record a video going over how I would set up your system, give you a strategy, and then give you specific tactics to bring up that weakness. Okay, now we'll get into it. And uh I it's funny, I was doing uh a lot of think, I do a lot of thinking on a day-to-day basis, sometimes too much thinking. Um, but I uh I forget where or what I was listening to that kind of made me made me think about it, but I was starting to think about how words matter, right? They're they're very important. And I am a, I will admit I'm a pain in the ass on client calls when we say, when they say certain words, and I'm like, well, what do you that that Drusky meme? What do you mean by that? Right. Like I start asking those questions and dive a little bit deeper. And then I started thinking about the word discipline, right? Because everybody always throws that around. It's like, ah, I just need more discipline. I need to lock in. Uh, oh man, like that's going to take a lot of discipline. And I started looking into that, and this is kind of the weak thoughts. It's discipline is not necessarily, and if you go back to the root of what it is, it's not necessarily being hard on yourself or white knuckling or you know, the classic quote unquote military discipline or tactical athlete discipline. I would say it's closer to the root of being a student and actually learning from your own goals, right? And that's once you submit to that learning, that is how you create discipline for the future. So I was really thinking about that. And I'm like, damn, like what if people are really saying, and you know, this could be the truth, depending on if you use that word a lot, what if you're really saying you're just not learning enough? Right. So when people go off on, say, like a nutrition tangent, they go crazy on the weekend, it's like, oh, damn, I just needed to have more discipline on that week. I'm like, well, maybe we need more learning, right? So if we think about some of the successful weeks that you've had or successful days that you've had, like what could we learn from that and apply? Right. And there's one question in today that we're going to get into is like, how do I consistently hit my protein number? Like, I just need to be more disciplined about it. And I'm like, well, actually, maybe not, right? Because maybe you hit your protein target on Monday and Tuesday. So you've proven that you know how to do it. So now let's actually learn, let's debrief a little bit and let's look at those meals. Right. So from that meal, it's like, okay, this meal was high in protein. I started the day strong. So why don't I try to, you know, maybe mix and match or flop around that meal with something like another protein staple or something like that. Boom, now all of a sudden our protein numbers. We are learning, aka we are practicing discipline. So something to think about there, I wanted to start with that because a lot of people talk about discipline, and I hear that all the time. And another one is motivation. That's that's another one. Um, yeah, there's a there's a ton of other ones, but uh busy, balance, all these words that people say. And I'm like, well, what do these actually mean? Because you start thinking about it, it's like, well, maybe they're not accurate, and maybe you're you're giving yourself like a false dichotomy of of what you're you're saying. So, anyways, getting off starting off with a tangent there. But first question, um, I had a question around fueling with whole foods, and then how do you hit your protein targets? These are ones that I blended um together. So I learned this from Justin Harris, who's a bodybuilding coach. He said the target is pick it, kill it, and grow it, right? So if you can do those three, those things with your food and you do that, you're able to do that or stick with it 80 to 90 percent of the time, you are going to see a massive difference with how you feel and how you perform, right? From that perspective, we're looking at microdensity, digestion, um, sustained satiety, all these different types of things, right? So if we start there, we're going to be really good to go. So I would say build your the majority of your food or your meals around that. And that's how you can get, you know, minimally processed whole foods. Now, I don't, I I personally, me personally, I don't go too deep in the weeds about like, well, technically, that is processed nowadays with how it's made. It's just like, okay, well, don't overthink it. Like, if it's in like a box or it's like cookies or cereal or something like that, it's like, okay, that's probably a little bit further on the uh on the processed like paradigm, right? So just use like common sense here. Um, but what I would say as well for the fueling with whole foods is have a list, create a list of protein, carbs, and fats and say, okay, these feel really good with like my my performance. I'm able to hit my macros with these, they are minimally processed. Okay, these are good. Here's my list of proteins, here's my list of carbs, and here's my list of fats. So, and this is something I make for clients. So if you're interested, um, you can leave either a comment if you listen on Spotify and just let me know, and then I could send a copy your way. But ultimately, like protein, like chicken breast, lean ground turkey, ground beef, I would say for both of those 93 plus. Um, any kind of like steak, I like non-fat Greek yogurt over here, um, eggs or more specifically egg whites, and then maybe one or two eggs. Um, eggs are not like a super high protein source like people say they are. It's there's a lot of fat in there as well, which isn't bad, but just something to think about when it comes to overall calories. Um, I like fat-free, uh, like 1% fair life sometimes. I kind of mix and match with that, as well as like protein powder. And those, like even something as simple as that, and obviously you can go fish, tuna, those types of things. Um, but that list usually for me is is like everything there is in rotation, and I personally don't get too bored with it. Again, as soon as we try to get cute or be crazy with it, that's when it gets overwhelming, and that's usually when we we go way off course. So carbs are pretty self-explanatory, but white rice, brown rice, potatoes. Um, I've been liking people love and hate it, love or hate it. I like quinoa, um, sourdough bread. Uh, depending on like a training day, I'll have like sourdough English muffins or rice cakes or um bagels. I've been loving um rice and grinds as well. I've been putting those up in the story. Another one here is uh well, like pastas as well as black beans. So black beans are super solid um from a micro perspective, but you also get some additional protein in there. Um, so black black beans are kind of a hack there. And then um I would consider like vegetables in here as well. Then fats. I wouldn't worry too much about fats. Usually the majority of people will get their fat intake from protein and carbs, but I would say like whole eggs, avocados, um, oils, nut butters, um, nuts, like those types of things. And and me personally, I am you know pretty good with dairy. So I usually will do some sort of uh cheese or or something like that. So those like you have a list like that and you keep that in rotation. And like I had mentioned, 80 to 90% of the time, depending on your targets, right? If you're in like a big fat loss cycle and you want to, you know, get pretty lean, then it's like, okay, maybe we should bump to 90% of the time. Um, if you're kind of at maintenance, um, even for me, like if I have a uh high carb day, I've been rotating my my carbs on training. Um, if you have like an extremely high carb day, like yeah, maybe you could have some additional rice cakes or or something like that. Um, so I found it helpful to kind of batch. Um, I would say if you go on that, you know, uh processed paradigm like we were talking about before, I will go a little bit more towards processed um when I have uh a lot more carbs just because it's uh it's hard to have all rice if you have like a super, super high carb day. Um oh, last thing too is uh fruit juice. That's another hack. So um apple juice, orange juice, uh cranberry juice. I've been loving pomegranate juice as well. So I would just keep those in rotation, create your list, and then that 20 to uh or 10 to 20 percent of the time, that's when we can kind of experiment and then just add to this list. And then you just you you got your meal plan. Um, so that's what I would do with uh with protein targets. Uh again, I I would say kind of answering the the second question that was um batched in there, I would say protein definitely requires uh intention, it requires strategy, it requires deliberate planning. Like there's a reason why the majority of people are drastically under eating protein. So, again, like I would say 0.7 to uh one gram uh times your body weight in protein is usually a good target for most people. Um, but again, it takes some planning. Like there's days where it's like, damn, I I gotta hit my protein numbers, different things like that. But if you keep those proteins that I had mentioned in rotation, you'll be pretty good. So I would say what I recommend to clients, and sometimes we will put in a standard depending on the person, two to three times per week, I would go into a specific meal prep. And we do not need to overthink it. Like for me, it's okay, we're going to throw beef in a pan. Or uh the other day, and I put this on my story as well. I threw it was like four pounds of chicken in a crock pot, put some seasoning in there, a little bit of water, and then you let it cook like while you're doing other tasks, and then you just shred it. And you have shredded chicken for a couple of days, right? So stuff like that um again takes some preparation. Um, and then again, going back to the discipline point, how I started that, like you can actually learn throughout the process where it's like, okay, let's try new things. Let's do um non-fat Greek yogurt, let's throw a scoop of protein in there, and it's like, boom, there's you know 40 plus grams right there. And it tastes pretty good, right? So again, just kind of figuring out where you are, and I would track, I would recommend tracking consistently. And then from there, you can kind of see micronutrients, your macronutrients, see which days work and actually look at those days. Like, okay, yeah, I probably could have improved this. Oh, damn, if I took out peanut butter here and then put a different carb source there, maybe some fruit, damn, I wouldn't have gone over on my fat. And then I would have more bandwidth for protein later on in the day, right? So thinking about it from that perspective, I think will be super helpful. Um, so this question was pre-run hydration and fueling. These are questions. Um, this is actually one I've gotten from a couple people, especially with the weather and clients and different things like that. So it's funny, this is the uh the season where everybody kind of panics a little bit because their runs might feel a little bit slower, their effort seems a little bit higher. Um, and it's most likely because of the heat, unless you just completely stopped running. Um, so a couple of recommendations that I would have is think about, okay, if you have a run in the morning and you're running first thing in the morning, a tactic that you can use, and again, super dependent on the person, but uh maybe the night before you could have a little bit higher carb, and then you're going to be able to be able to have some of those usable carbs on your run. So, me personally, I would never say, or I usually don't recommend doing anything completely fasted. I know some people will have uh, you know, a couple sips of water and be like, all right, let's rip it. And it's like, okay, like, is that the best method? Like, are we going to squeeze everything that we can out of this session? Probably not. Maybe I would I would venture to guess no. So, with that person, if you're training in the morning, I would always say, like, make sure we're at minimum hydrating with some sort of electrolyte, especially with the heat. Um, BPN, I use their electrolytes. Uh, a lot of people enjoy coconut water from a potassium standpoint as well. Um, I've used tailwind, it's pretty solid, and there is some with a little bit of caffeine in there, so that is good. Um, fruit juice, again, thinking about the pomegranate juice, cranberry juice. We just want to figure out, you know, from a perspective of okay, how can we get in some sodium, maybe some potassium, as well as carbs before if you are able to eat, I would say, and again, I know this question was about hydration, well, and fueling as well, but um uh something that I like is rice cakes and honey. That's another easy one, takes two seconds. I like to say faster than fast food. Um, and then lastly, with uh with hydration, just remember the pee test. Like we don't want a ton of water just like sloshing around. But I would say, you know, with your pee, is it completely yellow? Like, is it like a highlighter? You probably are way under hydrated. Um, if it's crystal clear, you're probably you probably need to back off a little bit. I know that's a common misconception of like, okay, drink a gallon a day and different things like that. But if you are completely you know clear and it's just water that you've been drinking, you're probably gonna see gonna feel some of the same symptoms of being dehydrated. Um, so go for that like straw uh or a little off-white type uh type color there with your P test. Now, with like midday or afternoon, I personally, the what I've been doing and feeling really good with it is uh high carb, I would say as much as you can tolerate without shitting your pants, right? So like for a even yesterday for me, for a what did I yesterday, a leg day, it's like okay, uh it was a later, uh later lift, uh I think midday. And it's like, okay, let's have uh, I probably had uh 150, maybe 160 grams of carbs before, and the session was phenomenal, right? So even from a perspective of if you train in the morning, it's just trying to get as many, as many carbs in as possible without upsetting your stomach, right? It's gonna be different for everybody, but I promise you, you if you do the fueling and will feel uh and do the fueling with uh with uh meals and hydration is what I meant to say, you will feel a lot better. So with fuel, low fat, low fiber, we just want it to be readily available, which those things will slow down the digestion of the uh of all the food that you're eating. So we don't want that. Again, we don't want a brick in our stomach. So again, thinking about for me, it's like rice and grinds is usually a pretty solid staple. Um, sourdough, English muffin, honey, and banana, uh, depending on the the day, I might have fat, a little bit more fat in the morning. Um, and then a pre-workout meal would be just predominantly carb and protein. So that's what I would uh I would say there. So this question how to combat performance anxiety. And this is a really good question. And I think it resonates with a lot of people. Some people are definitely scared to admit it, but I think we all have it to a certain extent, depending on what you're doing. Um, I would say fear is is good. It means that you care and it means that you you uh hopefully put your best effort forward. I would say too much fear, like you're in that uh, you know, paralysis state. I would say that's obviously not good. So a couple of things that I've done, and um, you know, even some things like I think back to my first time instructing, and it was like it was absolute chaos. I was going crazy being in a room full of I don't know, 30, maybe 40 people, it's like super overwhelming. You're up there. Um, it's like, what if I make a fool out of myself? Like uh those different types of things, your heart's pounding and your your voice is kind of like puttering a little bit. Um, and even like the start of the podcast, like super uncomfortable. Um, I would probably be uh I would probably ruin ruin the momentum if I went back and listened to the first one. Like, oh man, this is terrible. Um, so yeah, I would say with any kind of performance anxiety, regardless of what it is, whether it's physical, mental, um, number one, get in as many reps as possible. And I know that sounds like obvious advice, but I think of uh I think of uh I think it was Alex Hormozy who said, you know, you want to do so much work that it's impossible to fail. So that is the perspective that I would take. Like even with, you know, getting reps, uh, even if I don't send it out anywhere, or um practicing, you know, being uncomfortable with conversations, which is going to help with uh with instructing. Um, even when you take it to like a PT level, right? If you can prove that you have been there and done that with reps, say for example, you want to improve your plank, and you are every morning you're hitting a plank, right? Because we can they're they're they don't have like a big recovery burden. So say you're doing that every morning. You are so, you know, at first it sucks. Now all of a sudden you're like, all right, I'm getting a little bit better, my times are improving. Now, when it comes to test day, you have proven that you've been there and done that with that certain metric. So, what I always like to say here too is make sure we're measuring backwards. I think this is very important with everything that we do. Is like, okay, get some data, get a hard starting point, like no judgment, judgment free. It's like, okay, where are we? Like, what are we, what are we looking at? Right. So for that plank example, we do one plank as long as possible. We hold on for dear life. And it's like, okay, yeah, we're we're not where we need to be, but like this is our starting point, right? Let's detach from the outcome. Now you put in eight weeks and then you retest that same plank. And it's like, okay, wow, like I drastically improved this. Remember where I started, let's keep going, right? That type of perspective. And that's applicable to running, to presenting, to whatever you need, whatever kind of goal you have. So the other thing that I would say is uh solicit productive feedback, I would say, from yourself and from others. So we just talked about, you know, people looking at their uh their food tracking and like, okay, yeah, I could do this, I could do that. Now, if I look at that and it's like, okay, well, we need to improve this, like improve that, like this did really you did really well at this. Um, this is this is solid. How can we repeat this? That type of perspective, you're getting it not only from yourself, but somebody on the outside, right? So this is something, even if the the uh with the instructing example for me, it's like, okay, I am terrified to do this. I am going to do it in front of my close, tight knit team, like three people, four people, maybe five people in. There and now I can get feedback with a lower stress kind of scenario, depending. Um, but you you can get some feedback from other people, and now you do it again with their and with their feedback. But again, you know, I think some people are really good at giving feedback, other people suck at giving feedback. Um, so I would definitely choose wisely with who you're getting your feedback from, if at all possible. Um, another thing here, kind of a little bit off topic, but I promise you is directly applicable, is I would say hold your standards, right? That is the the small daily decisions that you don't feel like doing that you do, anyways, right? So, for example, if you want to improve your confidence or improve your uh performance with something you know in particular, everything that you do is going to either fuel that or kind of hinder it a little bit. So, what I mean by that is if you if you want to perform and you are also hitting snooze, or you are also saying you're gonna get, I don't know, 10K plus steps, and then you miss a couple days and we kind of go off track. Same thing with nutrition, right? You want to be able to perform and then you are really locked in, you're dialed Monday through Friday, and then Saturday through Sunday is like all off the rocker, right? So those little things, it's it's killing self-efficacy, right? So you are not doing what you said you were going to do, and that is going to show up, whether it's directly applicable or whether it's, you know, subconscious, whatever that may be, it's going to show up with your performance. So the more if you flip that on its head, and the more that you do what you say you were going to do, you're going to increase your performance overall for whatever you are trying to perform at. The last thing here on this one, um, and this is a note to self here, is don't take yourself too serious, right? Like it's okay to laugh at yourself like through the BS. And you know, there's a lot of good that comes out of like laughing in kind of a stressful situation, right? Like the goal is not to be like there's a comedian on stage. That is not what I'm saying. But in like a certain event or a certain setting, it's like, okay, that was terrible. Like, and we can just laugh at it, right? And then just move on and improve it. But if you just keep drilling your head, like I remember even when I first started recording, like years ago, first started recording check-ins, uh or whatever I was doing, like something with recording, I'd be like, damn, like this is I would mess something up, or I would stutter, or something would happen. And there were times where I literally wanted to put my head through a wall, right? Like that's how frustrating it got. And I got so serious to the point where like I was like, I am miserable right now because I want to, you know, punch myself in the face, right? Because we just get so worked up and it's like, okay, this isn't productive. But if you can get to a point where you're like, it's not obviously like I said, setting dependent, and you can kind of laugh at yourself. It's like, okay, like this isn't the end of the world. Like, I can't believe that happened. Like, let's laugh and move on. So I think that's another tool as well to to kind of again fuel that confidence. So when you do or when you are called on to perform, you'll be able to do it. Um, so the next one year is uh training, training on shift, and they had mentioned Panamas. And I had a couple people actually talk about Panamas. So I'm gonna give you know my uh my recommendation here, and I would say, like with anything, and again, shameless plug to that um to the tactical readiness blueprint. You'd need to, in my opinion, and this is for everybody, regardless of which schedule, but I would say identify the priority, right? What do you suck at, or what are your specific weaknesses, and then bias those, right? So now all of a sudden we've already eliminated all this noise, all the nonsense, and we can focus on one thing, right? And as I mentioned, we are still going to train other things, but now we can kind of work backwards and say, these are our priorities. This is what we need to kind of essentially program first, and now we can program around that. So that is a good tool for the minimum effective dose. For me, I you'd probably guess this if you've listened before, but I would say to start, I would recommend like a full body split, something like that, just because of the flexibility and bandwidth for uh and creating bandwidth for conditioning, right? So this is a split that I found definitely respects the chaos, where if you did two full body days, two conditioning days, now all of a sudden we have some flexibility if the schedule gets the best of you. So one person, I don't know about the other person, but one person that asked is newer on Panamas. So this is definitely what I would recommend, where you don't know necessarily how your body's going to respond, you know, weeks in, or if uh if chaos pops up and now you need to miss and different things like that. But again, if we're training four days per week, we have three uh very powerful flexibility days there where it's like, okay, if we were absolutely smoked, we didn't sleep, those types of things. We don't need to go beat ourselves down and go crush it. If you're feeling good, right, you were allowed to train tired. But I would say, okay, let's look at this strategically. Maybe we can drop one of these uh full body days, or not drop it, but maybe we can push this to the right and take an off day. And that's how you get uh sustainable programming, but more importantly, you can repeat the programming week after week. So with that layout, I would say again, you know, maybe day one, full body and maybe some speed work, maybe air bike uh intervals, maybe some um some repeats, something like that. Day two, uh a lower stem conditioning. I want to see how you respond with uh heavier legs. Maybe it's uh just easy low impact conditioning, maybe it's easy running. Uh depending on the person, you could maybe throw like surges or pickups in there. Um day three would be that off day or flexible uh flexibility day. Day four, maybe we're doing another full body. Um, so like an opposite. So maybe the first full body where we're biasing a squat, maybe this full body we're biasing a hinge. And then maybe on the end of this one, we throw an arm farm, right? Everybody loves an arm farm. And then the last day, I would try to get more moderate stem conditioning. So maybe some tempo stuff, maybe uh repeats depending on what you did on day one, uh, maybe threshold work, or depending if you're uh kind of newer or you want to improve, for example, a your runtime. Maybe we do another easy run or something like that. But overall, that allows auto-regulating so we can kind of adjust and then most importantly, take advantage of our off days. Uh, and last thing on this, too, this is something that I do with myself. Don't feel like you need to program Monday through Friday. I think a lot of people look at that and they're like, oh, like got it Monday, gotta train, like, gotta start the week strong. And it's like, why? Like, that doesn't necessarily mean anything just because you you quote unquote started the week, right? A lot of people say, like, never miss a Monday. And it's like, well, what if our like, what if our schedule doesn't work for that? Like, what's the point? So, even for me, like what I mean by that is I usually start a lot of my weeks off on Saturday. It's like, okay, I know I have a busy day with programming on Saturday. Why don't I, you know, get that's going to be my break where I start my week on Saturday? Um, you can start it on Sunday, you can start it on Wednesday. It doesn't matter as long as you look at the big picture and you're kind of working through that day one through day seven. Um, so this is another good question, and uh, it's something that I've actually thought a lot about. So, should I cut calories the next day if I go over? So, this I I have this, I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I would say no. Um, a lot of people will do, unless and a caveat here is if you're doing carb cycling, I feel like that's kind of you know, an obvious line, but I feel like I need to say it. Um, I would say, you know, it common sense would say, okay, if you look at calories on a week-to-week basis, you can understand that that your total average for that week is probably the most important, right? You can make that argument for sure. So I would say yes, but I would also say kind of these ups and downs and these fluctuations from a behavior perspective almost creates a bad relationship, right? So now we're creating that slippery slope where it's like, all right, well, I'll just eat whatever the hell I want. And then the next day I'm going to eat 600 calories, right? So and then it gets like, okay, well, now we're giving ourselves permission to go a little bit off course if we know that we can just kind of course correct, right? So I would say no, and that's one of the main reasons. Um, but like I said, you're you're kind of almost teaching yourself that you can bend the rules or kind of flex your standards. Now, this is not me saying, you know, you you need to be a robot. I am not perfect with my macros whatsoever, and I'm not expecting anybody else to be. So I would rather you, you know, make intentional decisions with your food, live with them, and then respond quicker. Right. So if you go over your calories on one day, that is not saying, and it's, you know, obviously within reason, that is not saying it's like, okay, well, now tomorrow, maybe you have a training session tomorrow, and now we're going to like drastically underfuel that just because to try to make up for the other day. Right. So uh again, I would rather have have you, if you go a little bit over, just respond the next day with your exact calories or your close to your targets, not exact, but close to your targets, and then just keep moving, right? If you do that and you respond quicker, all these things, these little like ups and downs are just blips on the radar. The problem is when people go over, and then it's like, oh crap, I'm way over. Now let's go way under. Now I'm ravenous the next day. Now I'm gonna go way over. And then it's like, well, it's already Saturday, let's just fire it up on Monday. Um I'm kind of already off. And then it just kind of that it creates that yo-yo, which we we don't need. So again, if you go over, just uh respond, get back on course, no more, no less. And um, just the last thing here, don't try to outwork what you did. It doesn't work like that. Um, so yeah, just don't do that and make sure you respond. Um, how to avoid snacking and balancing going out to eat. Um, again, we're we're tying back. Maybe that was a that was uh intentional starting with the discipline thing. Um, I would say getting back to the learning, right? So thinking about uh maybe some triggers, maybe some behaviors, those types of things. And the biggest piece of advice that I would say is control your environment. So figuring out like if you have like a bunch of crap in your pantry or in your house and you're just kind of going off of willpower to try to fight it and not do it, um, obviously that's going to run out. So I would say willpower is definitely a finite resource. We don't, I've never really looked at it this way, but it's like, you know, if you are have all this other stuff kind of like staring at you, um, not only will the chances of you breaking be much higher. I would say, as talking about willpower being a finite resource, you're wasting that willpower on things that could be prevented. Right. So if you do that every day or every morning and it's like, no, I'm going to do that, right? I'm disciplined, I'm motivated, I'm not going off track, I'm not having X, Y, and Z. Now all of a sudden we're we're kind of already tapping into our willpower stores uh earlier on in the day. And now when you're later on in the day, maybe when you have some more fatigue, maybe after training, whatever that may be, it's going to be so much easier to kind of crash, right, with some of the things that we're doing. Um, so that's one thing. Definitely control the environment. And I had uh my actually the first guest in the podcast uh was Stu Smith. So I'm sure if you're listening to this, you are most likely familiar with Stu Smith. Um, but he talked about flipping discipline on its head, right? And I kind of looked at it as like having and it discipline doesn't or uh dopamine doesn't work like this, I'm well aware, but just thinking about it from this perspective, we have overall or strategic dopamine, and then we have tactical dopamine. So, in my opinion, it's it's looking at it from a perspective of okay, tactical dopamine is like quick fixes. Um, we're just going to eat this bag of chips, or we're going to just scroll so I can just get, you know, the good stuff. But then you look at strategic dopamine, and it's like you can flip dopamine on its head if you hold out and now you feel that win, right? So the same thing with scrolling. It's like, you know what? I'm gonna put my phone down at this time and I'm gonna hold that line, right? In the morning, you're gonna feel a lot better, right? So it's delayed gratification here. Same thing with eating, right? And it's it's literally happened to me. It's like, okay, I'm I'm dialed in, I'm everything's good. Now uh we're going, you know, out to eat or we're going to a uh family member's house or something, right? Something throws a wrench in the plan. And it's like, okay, well, all right, let's let's stick with it. Let's let's not go crazy. Um, let's let's just hold that hold that line where we can. You feel like even uh I'm thinking about the fourth of July, right? Held the line, and I don't I don't drink, but held the line with like snacks and all that stuff. You leave there, and in the morning you're like, damn, I feel good. Like that, I I I held it down when I was supposed to, right? So that is that more strategic level dopamine. And and I was just trying to give you an analogy there. Hopefully, hopefully you're tracking. Um, so let me talk about common tactics with going out to eat. And these are things that I do and I definitely recommend to my clients. Um, so going out to eat, it's super important, right? Like if you like, don't be weird. Like, if your family's going out to eat, don't say no, like I gotta stay back, those types of things. Um, I I think the the first thing thinking back to the food list that I talked about with the 80 to 90 percent there, right? Thinking about, you know, uh minimally processed foods 89 of the time. That 10 or 20 is is a perfect opportunity for a nice dinner. So just giving you that little pro tip there. But when you go out to eat, think of the the least bad options, right? Like let's use, let's challenge ourselves and let's use common sense here. So if you have a list of like three or four things and it's like, okay, like let's let me think about this. Okay, this is probably less than that. This is probably less than that, or or uh better, still tastes good. Let me go with this meal, right? So if you pick the the best available option and not the quote unquote ideal one, you're gonna be in a good spot. Um another another tip here, I would say take from somewhere, right? So think about the aspect of going out to eat, right? I always tell people, you know, enjoy your meal, right? Meal in that case is singular, right? It doesn't have to be an appetizer and then three drinks and then dessert and then you know, stopping for a snack on the way home, whatever that may be, right? That's how it gets out of control. So we can think of that balancing act of saying, okay, I'm going to have uh this meal, and then maybe I change up the side a little bit. Maybe I go vegetable on the side, right? Those are small, small uh little balancing acts where we can, I'm not trying to say like offset your meal, but something to think, something to think about there. A couple other things is uh obviously protein first, like I mentioned. So looking at the protein source first and then kind of building around that. The last thing is what I've been telling people is limit it per week. So commit to say if you and your uh significant other like to go out to eat, right? It's like, okay, let's commit to one time per week, right? Let's save some money. We don't need to go crazy going out three or four times per week, right? It just kind of like defeats the purpose of what you're actually trying to do, right? So I would say limit it and make it like earned. Hey, let's make it, you know, an actual like ritual. Hey, we're gonna go out to eat every Saturday. Why don't we try to get, you know, go to a new spot every Saturday, right? Or explore somewhere different. Let's let's uh travel a little bit, right? And make it like a ritual so it's actually special. If you do something every single week, it just kind of gets uh almost redundant and it's like, okay, this is not why like it's still good, but it's it's kind of in my opinion, it's probably kind of missing the mark. So you can kind of treat it like it's special and then quote unquote earn it towards the end of the week, and it's all connected. You can use that as your 10 to 20 percent. Um, this one, so best way to cut caffeine and nicotine. So I am not the uh the gold standard here um for this stuff and more specifically, I uh I have uh I frequently use nicotine as well as uh caffeine. Um, not crazy by any means, but I do use both. Um and it would probably be pretty rough cutting both of them out. So um just wanted to be transparent with that. But I would say, you know, the two ways that come to mind is obviously like tapering down with uh one or the other or both, and then the other one is just cold turkey, like ripping off the band aid. So I actually have a client that's going to warrant, and obviously he's not gonna be able to have uh caffeine and nicotine, and he uses both. So we're actually kind of working through that process. But my thought process with this, and what we've me and him have talked back and forth on it. Um, we want to control what we can control, right? And if he's going to that school, that could be a good forcing mechanism to stop them because he's not gonna be able to do them, anyways. So, what I would say is okay, let's pick a date, let's have a drop dead date, and he vouched for the the taper method that we're gonna use here. So let's pick a date, okay. It's X date. This is when you know we're giving ourselves like about a month, maybe a month and a half runway before he actually goes to school to stop. Right. And I think about that perspective. So if there's able to be some sort of forcing mechanism, I'm not saying that you have to go to school, but it's like let's pick a date. Because at the end of the day, I would rather again control what you can control and maybe feel like shit throughout that time while you can kind of control it, rather than just saying, you know what, I'm just gonna kind of ride it out. And then once I get there, I will figure it out because you're gonna be miserable and you're gonna put more stress, more everything on top of it. So again, drop dead date and then taper things down. So with uh just like nicotine, for example, if you're using you know six milligrams, let's drop down to three, let's drop down the frequency, so on and so forth. And then the same, like similar kind of concept with uh with caffeine. And I've found uh, you know, many people and I've talked to many clients, and even I've found myself um fall into this where caffeine for a lot of us, uh obviously we will, you know, feel the uh like headaches and different things like that. But sometimes for depending on the person, it's more of like a routine where I remember when I was working nights years ago, I would just like pull into the gas station before like I wasn't even really thinking, I would just pull into the gas station and just grab an energy drink. And I'm like, I didn't even really feel that tired or I didn't even really feel like one, but I was just there. Um, so I found that a lot of the times it's more of like focusing on habits um and kind of replacing that with something rather than you know, uh just genuinely like having to need it. So something to think about there. Um, but I would attack uh, you know, maybe you could attack both of them, both of them at the same time would be pretty rough. Um, but again, if you're doing the taper method, maybe try to try to crush one and the other um if time allows. Um already kind of touched on this one actually, but should I train in a tired state to get reps? And what this person was referring to, uh, to give you some context was sleep deprivation and more of that discipline. Crazy. The word keeps coming up. Um, I would say no, right? We we are allowed to train in a fatigued state, like I said, with heavy legs and you're managing the weekly volume, so on and so forth. But to go out of your way and just intentionally embrace like a suck fest is kind of ridiculous to me, right? Like that would be like having options for a meal, and you choose an MRE over a home cooked meal just to know what it tastes like. And you I would argue you probably already know what it tastes like, so why are we doing it? Right, like why would we want to do that? And now you think about like the uniform, you think about just life in general, right? We are going to be stressed and tired. So, what is sleep deprivation and dropping your performance going to do for the overall big picture? It's not gonna do much, right? Especially from a physical capacity. So if you're trying to, you know, mentally test yourself with certain things, I think there's much, much, much better, uh, better opportunities and more ROI with uh with different things that will help you in both physical and and mental. So again, with training, like you want to think about the idea of raising your floor. So when you are tired or when you are getting punched in the face, your floor is so much higher or your ceiling is so much higher that when you do get dropped down a couple of notches, you are still well above standards. Like you are good to go. Um, so that's what I would kind of think of. And again, the objective of raising the floor is thinking about sleep, stress management, nutrition, training, all sorts of stuff like that, right? So that way, like I'd mentioned, when you do get punched in the face, you are still at a high capacity. So I think, you know, 10 out of 10 times I would focus on, you know, putting your phone down, right? That is something that is challenging, especially in today, today's day and age. That is practicing dishes. Discipline, daily standards, doing what you said you were going to do. You are going to increase confidence. Maybe journaling and reflecting. You are going to increase discipline or learning throughout doing those things. Focusing on increasing your performance, like getting PRs. That is going to increase your performance. Getting uncomfortable in different ways, right? So maybe it is something as simple as like, hey, I'm in the shower. I hate cold water. I am going to turn off and progressively overload cold water there, right? Sounds so stupid, but that is something where it's like, okay, I am doing multiple things. I'm getting uncomfortable and I embracing, I embracing it. Right. Maybe it's starting conversations with different people that you've never met and just like sparking up, uh, like going beyond above and beyond small talk. And like that is super uncomfortable nowadays. And for me, it is. So what if I did that at the gym? Or what if I did that um with somebody new or somebody that I work with that I've never talked to, right? Like stuff like that, I think will offer you more ROI and that will be more effective or give you more effective reps for when it actually matters. Um couple more here. Um daily or weekly weigh-ins. Um, this is super dependent on the person. You could go uh for some clients, I have daily, just so we can eliminate the noise. I weigh myself daily. You could do weekly, so once a week, just making sure it's consistent. And then I also have people who are non-weigh-ins um for different clients. So maybe we're focusing on different targets, maybe it's uh tape measures, maybe it's clothes that we wear, it's how you feel, how uh how your uniform fits. And but they all have progress pictures. So I think it's important, especially to start maybe day to day, just so we could see um we could kind of eliminate some of that noise. But I know how attached people get to the scale. So sometimes it doesn't really, you know, matter as much or it doesn't tell the full story. So I would rather focus on performance. Um, but we could eliminate the the noise, you know, um, with these day-to-day fluctuations by thinking about our carb intake the day before, sleep, stress, uh, if you're a female, a cycle, um, sodium, bowel movements, the the list really goes on. So uh yeah, it's really kind of preference here. Um, but you know, I would say the quote unquote gold standard, in my opinion, would be daily, just so we can kind of eliminate some of that noise. Um, a couple more here. So, how to prioritize and break up training into a smaller window? Do I break it up into two sessions? Question mark. Um, I would say for most, I would avoid two days. Um, depending on the person, right? I think that's uh depending on the person and the targets and what they got going on, it might be a little bit aggressive. Um, so if we break up sessions, I would say, yeah, like maybe we can break up strength training and conditioning. Um, again, not the most ideal with like stressors and responsibilities, but it definitely can be done. Um, I would say the way that I think, in my opinion, every training session should be broken up. So if we're thinking about strength training, um, you want a good warm-up that targets everything, maybe gets your heart rate elevated, primer or prep work. So here would be like mobility, stability, um, core movement patterns, kind of priming the CNS, a main mover, uh, maybe two main movers, supplemental work, some more hypertrophy, and then potential finisher, right? So arms, conditioning, or maybe we're targeting a weakness. So if you think about that and the structure of a traditional day, what is going to move the needle most for you? Right. So again, that is most likely the main mover. So if we have to, I'm not recommending doing this if we don't have to, obviously, but we start looking at it from a perspective of okay, what are the main movers? Worst, absolute worst case scenario, backs against the wall. I have 10, 15 minutes. You can get away with warming up and then progressively overloading, you know, doing proper ramp upsets and hitting the main movement pattern and getting out of there, right? And then you can kind of reverse engineer that. So maybe you have time for primer or prep work, right? Hitting the main movers and getting out. Maybe you have time for supplemental work, like hypertrophy after the main movers. Okay, let's drop the finisher, right? So thinking about it from that perspective, the other thing that I would say, looking at it from a week-to-week basis, what is the long-term strategy and what is or what are your specific goals? Right. So now we can start looking at it from a perspective of okay, I want to improve my runtime. We are going to need to bias some of these runs. So, worst case scenario, backs against the wall. Maybe we have to drop some, drop a training day, right? So bigger, bigger picture, we need to we need to cut from somewhere. Okay, let's drop train the strength and let's bias some of the running. That way we can um we can still kind of use what we have to our advantage. So if you're very strong, it's like, okay, we're maybe we like training, strength training a little bit more, but we're our strength is already really good. Maybe we do we bias conditioning if we need to cut some of the weeks. Um, so I would say like the levels doing your training as is, as it's prescribed, as long as it's good training. Um, bias your specific target, keep the main thing, the main thing. And then lastly, here is do what you can, right? So go find a win, even if that's getting through a warm-up and shit pops up and you have to cut it short. It's like, okay, like is that ideal? Obviously not, but we still got something in. Maybe that's doing some push-ups and pull-ups because we don't have time, right? Maybe you have a pull-up bar at your house, something like that, but you could still look at those as wins. Not perfect, but you still uh still kept forward momentum. Last question here um, how to improve VO2 Max for specific VO2 max test? And I think this is from a firefighter, I believe. So I would say first things first, understanding again, starting with that readiness uh evaluation, get a baseline. So I would recommend something like a 12-minute Coopers. So just running for max distance uh for 12 minutes, see what you cover. And that's more of a quote unquote field test. Like you don't need like special equipment or anything, you just need a way to track some of the metrics and uh somewhere to run. So I would say get a baseline, and there from there we can gather heart rate, um, heart rate data, so average heart rate, max heart rate. We can get uh distance covered, heart rate recovery, so how long it takes you to get below 120 beats per minute. We can see pace, and then we can get some data that we can we can measure against. So I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle about specific VO2 max, um, but I would say, okay, if we have all this data and then we improved it, we beat this in eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, then it's uh a pretty safe assessment to say that you improved your VO2 max, right? So we don't need to like go pay for being hooked up and hooked up to you know uh a monitor and different things like that. I would just personally recommend a field test. Uh, a couple other things that you can think about, and again, this is very, very, very person dependent. So there's nuance here, but I would look at your body comp as well. So thinking about okay, do we have some weight to lose, right? Like, do we have some uh some room for growth there or the opposite um when it comes to body comp, right? So if you think about how VO2 max is measured, it is uh in in part of the the uh equation or the output. A lot of it has to do with weight. So it'd be like thinking about miles per gallon on a car, right? If we can make a car more efficient or we drive a different car instead of driving a massive diesel truck, we can use a car. We're going to get a lot a lot more mileage out of the car, right? Because we improved our efficiency. So if we can improve your capacity while dropping some body weight, we're going to in turn improve your VO2 max. So, what I would say is general capacity work, especially starting out, and then for the for the body weight, you know, slight, slight, slight deficit, we still want to, and this is if you need to lose weight. Um, but having that uh that perspective of a very slight deficit, we'll go, you know, kick go for a couple of weeks. Let's reassess and make sure we're we're losing, you know, about a pound per week. That's going to um obviously there's there's multiple different competing priorities or factors here, but that's gonna make the the VO2 max move in the right direction, um, as well as, like I'd mentioned, general capacity. So uh I usually recommend, depending on the starting point, two to three runs easy per week. So at that easy conversational pace, maybe zero to one, depending on where you're at, at moderate, so like tempo threshold, and then uh depending on one, uh maybe zero to one runs at hard, so like repeats, um, that that uh somewhat sustainable but hard pace, and you will be good to go. So just kind of recap there, body comp um or no, gather metrics, body comp and then general capacity. So with that, too, like uh I've talked about this before, I think it was on a QA as well. Just remember like Goodhart's law, like if we just kind of drill a certain measure, like if once we start using that as our gauge uh of success, um, it it kind of ceases to be a good measure. So if you think about that from a different perspective, we don't want to just like okay, let's not let's only focus on. I just searched VO2 Max uh improvement plans and let's just rip VO2 Max training sessions. Like, yeah, you you might improve your VO2 max, but what if it, you know, you're you're going to high intensity and now we're injured, right? What if we uh do not, you know, properly do or focus on our deficit, we just kind of rip a VO2 max plan and now we're we're getting more wear and tear, or maybe we lost um some strength. So now we're going to maybe struggle on the CPAT or something like that, right? So everything has an effect. Um, but these two or three recommendations um make those and and uh have us use those to our advantage. So um that's what I got for today with the QA. Again, I appreciate the questions. If you ever have any kind of questions, don't ever hesitate to drop them, whether it's a DM, whether it's uh a comment on Spotify. And then um the last thing that I would ask if you've gotten anything from the podcast, you know, please don't be uh be shy to leave a review. It's definitely helpful and will help uh help get to more tactical athletes. So I appreciate you. Appreciate what you do, and until next time.